Mission controllers are making excellent progress in returning Mars Express to routine service. Some science activities have already resumed after being temporarily suspended last month following a series of faults related to the onboard data storage system.

Having arrived around Mars in December 2003 for an initial two-year mission, the spacecraft is now in its eighth year of science operations. It has returned some of the most stunning images and valuable science data ever obtained from the Red Planet.

In mid-October 2011, anomalies in the operation of its Solid-State Mass Memory (SSMM) system caused science observations to be temporarily halted.